CafeChatNoir

Oh, and the weekend was by no means a loss whatsoever – found a new winery pointed out by a fellow BT’er: Ingleside Vineyards. 10 tastings for $2.50. My wine supply is restocked.

Dinner was fantastic, frankly, the turkey was even better than Mom’s. Had all our favorites, and skipped the veggies, unless you count pickles.

pointed out that we can add a #12 to the “signs you’re having Thanksgiving Dinner w/ a geek” – The diner to laptop ratio is 1 to 1. Yes, we sat around the living room after dinner with our laptops surfing the web and playing games and watching football, and I got my training plan for the March race put together.

All in all, a good day.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!!

The obligatory last minute run to the market has been done, the turkey is brining, and actually, there isn’t a whole lot else to do until gets here anyway, so I’ll be spending the next couple hours goofing off.

Need some ideas here. Going to the beach in two weeks. We’ll be in a house w/kitchen and all that good stuff. While there are certain restaurants we’ll be hitting no matter what, there is still the matter of dinner in some nights, and I have near ZERO ideas. So far I have

– hot dogs & beans & such.
– steamed shrimp from one of the local seafood distributors down there.
– pizza the night we get in

The only other thing I can come up with is making a lasagna ahead of time, freezing it, and taking it along as well…

Soooo, any decent “make ahead, freeze & take along” or “easy to transport the raw ingredients” (all in a bigassed cooler) ideas that you’ve got are VERY welcome!!

Amidst a day of firsts yesterday, I finally got a pair of Tevas for the summer. (Yes, I am behind the curve on everything.) Wow,they are sooooooooo comfy. So, I’m now ready for the beach. :)

Realized that my schedule being all over the place next week at least means that I can go get the car inspected tomorrow morning before work, which is good, given that I am almost out of time for that…

Also had to reluctantly admit that a gal can’t live on Chinese, Pizza & Glory Days alone, and headed up to the market and now I’ve got sammich fixins and should be good to go for a couple days. Also cat food. Sheesh, you have to give them treats for breakfast once and they look at you like you’re some kind of monster the rest of the day. (I did give them a real breakfast when I got back.)

20 days til the beach. 20 DAYS!! I can’t wait. I will seriously miss the critters, but… Maybe we can scope out a pet-friendly place for next year while we’re down there. So much to tend to before leaving, seriously need to get a couple lists together, cause this year it’s not just “bring clothes & money”, I’m kinda in charge of everything Mom used to do. (Dammit, she should have left a manual somewhere!) I did call the rental place, I do not have to bring any paperwork, so that’s one less thing to worry about.

In the “good news for a change department” I give you: Dark chocolate seen healthy for arteries So, you no longer have to feel guilty for picking out the Special Dark bars from the Hershey’s mini assortments before putting it in the candy dish on your desk. :)

While there is absolutely nothing wrong with ordering out Chinese food when you’re the only one eating, do NOT order crab rangoon all by yourself. It’s very VERY good, but if you eat the entire order of it all by yourself, you’ll be on the verge of exploding, and the other things you ordered go straight to the fridge for tomorrow’s lunch.

Guess what I had for dinner? :)

No matter how pretty in the package, round steaks are NOT good on the grill. Edible, but still… Next time ask the butcher to go get some filet mignons…

But all in all, a nice afternoon.

The two loaves decided they’d rather be one mutant loaf during the second rise. I’ve managed to get them separated and put them in the oven – I really need a bigger baking sheet for doing this. I seem to recall thinking the same thing last time, and then promptly forgetting about it every time I was anywhere that I could procure a larger one…

They decided they really wanted to be one… Had to cut them apart again after baking. They’ve cooled off enough to eat, so I had to test one. (Two loaf recipes work out so well that way!)

YUM! Crust is kinda chewy, but it’s also not completely cooled yet, but despite the dough fighting back from start to finish, we have a very acceptable product.

Kitchen is all picked up, bread is on its first second rise, and things should be done well before it’s time for me to go. I’m a touch concerned because the dough did not want to cooperate at ALL when I did the rollout… We’ll see how forgiving the recipe is!

Dinner should be fun – it’s gonna be a sleepover too! Linda (who is visiting) is like a second Mom to me. They moved up to PA a couple years ago when they retired, so it will be good to see her. Imagine Martha Stewart without the felony conviction and an actual friendly & nice personality. That’s Linda. There is nothing domestic that she cannot do, and do incredibly well. Cooking, baking, sewing, you name it. So, it’s a tiny bit intimidating to cook for her. :)

So, she’s staying over at Mom’s and I am gonna crash there too and we’re just gonna stay up late and talk and eat and drink wine and have fun.

Baking with a cat that is excessively interested in food is a challenge. First there is convincing Snoopy that no, the flour is not powdered milk, and don’t even THINK about jumping up on the counter to do a swan dive into it. The yeast isn’t either. Nor is the salt. Then I had to forcibly remove him from the butter. (No, that butter did NOT go in the bread, and yes, I should know better than to turn my back for one second with him)

Having dinner at Mom’s tonight, family friend is in town. I’ve been requested to supply the French Bread. :-D

However, considering that it takes about 3 hours start to finish (lots of sit around and wait time…), I had better get cracking on it. Especially considering that I have to get all the kitchen counters cleared off to actually *do* anything…

I sure hope it tastes as good as it looks and smells. :)

Edit: I couldn’t wait any longer and ripped an end off one and buttered it up and OMG it is soooo good!!

Blah, blah, no baking today, yada, yada, flour, yeast, cornmeal, check!, rolling pin, FUCK.

Yes, I pored over the recipe multiple times to ensure I wasn’t missing any ingredients or that there wasn’t anything exotic in it that I would forget at the grocery store…

Unfortunately, I neglected to remember that I tossed my craptastic rolling pin out years ago and never replaced it.

Worked myself into a really fantastic snit – even the cats left the the kitchen in fear of potentially of flying objects. (Sometimes you just have to have a good snit, even over small stupid things. Sometimes especially over small stupid things…)

So, what I had hoped to start as a New Year’s Eve tradition will be another day.

In the meantime, I am going to go take a hot shower, gorge myself of Cheesy Ranch Bacon dip I made to console myself, then it’s off to Target to pick up a prescription and see what they have in the non-crappy rolling pin department. (I will not have another crappy one like I had before…)

Oh – and lest I forget – here’s the too cute Christmas card from :

…and more importantly, happy three day weekend. Once again my rocket scientist coworkers managed to strand two of us while the rest were at lunch. The upside to busy season is that for the next two months, we will be fully staffed. :)

I am in complete and total slacker mode tonight. I’ve got a Grolsch at my side and the cats have been taking turns with lap time.

Tomorrow will be a visit to the market for flour, yeast & cornmeal, and thus will begin my attempts to channel the spirit of one Mrs. Rose Reed* and bake some bread. (I’ve never done “regular” bread in anything but the bread machine before.) We’ll be starting with what appears to be a fairly straightforward French Bread recipe that came with the mixer. If it goes well, I will have bread to take to dinner Saturday night for Grandma’s birthday.

And we have the whole “new year” thing going as well this weekend. Three days to ponder, take stock, think back and look forward. Though every day really is a chance to start fresh, there is something about a new year. A pristine calendar full of blank pages – the hope that this year will be better, different, or just not crappy – maybe this year, the resolutions will stick, things will go well, mistakes will not be made, and the past will be learned from for a change.

Myself, I’ll be writing up my resolutions this year, as I always do. I know many who don’t do it anymore (or never have) for various perfectly legitimate reasons, but I like to think that I’m just not giving up. :)

Peace & Happy New Year.

*The wonderful woman that used to live next door to us in San Diego, and was like another grandmother to me, and was easily one of the best cooks on the planet.

Or un-boxing day as the case may be. Just wrestled my Billy Joel “Kohuept” (can’t get the cyrllics right) cd out of it’s case and loving it.

Got the mixer out of the box, and dayum, it is good and heavy – but I will have NO worries about it bouncing about the counter doing heavy duty stuff. Can’t decide yet what to try out on it first. Pretty much anything is going to require a trip to the market, as I have no flour in the house at the moment. I’m thinking I should just close my eyes and pick something from the recipe book – it will be easier than making a decision! (I’ve got it on good authority that the recipes that came with the mixer are quite good, plus someone has gotten me the English Muffin Bread recipe that they don’t print anymore)

Been looking over the attachments available. Definitely getting the shredder. Tired of grating my knuckles and paying way too much for pre-shredded cheese. OMG, They have an ice cream maker attachment. I need that like I need a hole in the head, but WOW. Will probably get a second bowl for it. This is going to be a VERY NICE thing to have in the kitchen.

Been a nice lazy Sunday, just puttering about more than anything, but I did get some laundry going so I have clean pants to wear to work tomorrow. With my sweater from Grandma that can only be described as “Grover Blue”. I love it. :)

This week is the calm before the storm at work. Busy season starts 1/3/05. Last year wasn’t as bad as I had expected, and I think this year will be OK – especially if I don’t get caught there til past 7:30 the first three nights like last year. (I am much better at telling folks to suck it up and wait until the morning, and/or, “No, I will NOT write you a script to fix your screw up, you fix it yourself, you overpaid data entry monkey.”)

Big things on tap for the week are getting the kitchen rearranged to find the optimal spot for the mixer, make something with it!, and coming up with New Year’s Resolutions that I know I won’t keep. :)

Eve is so cute. I just took her cow hoof away from her (she only gets it for a certain amount of time, I don’t need a puking dog on my hands) – she doesn’t growl or try to hide it, but she did wrap her paws around it and hang on to it for dear life, and the look on her face was, “Damn, opposable thumbs would be a HUGE plus right now.”

Second loaf of pumpkin bread stuck to the bottom of the pan. Guess I’ll just have to eat that one myself. :-D

All the baking that had to be done tonight is done – now the cleanup…. eeccchhhh. It’s not even the cleanup from the baking, cause I’ve been doing that as I go along (yay me) – it’s the rest of the place. The dining room still looks like a large natural disaster hit it from when the appliances came and I never did get everything back where it belongs.

I know it won’t take terribly long once I get started – it’s the getting started that’s always the kicker, isn’t it?

So, yes, cleaning. Yeah. All over it…

Not quite finished with the baking, the pumpkin bread is going right now – but here are the results of this weekends efforts:

Cookies!! We’ve got peanut butter, oatmeal chocolate chip, sugar, plain oatmeal and chocolate chip.

This photo was immediately followed by me yelling, “GET OUTTA THAT!!!!” (He did.)

My kitchen helper:

You know it’s time to go ahead and call it a night when you start thinking, “Well, I could just make one really BIG peanut butter cookie and that would be sooo much quicker.”

Overall, an extremely productive day in the kitchen. Scads of cookies – chocolate chip, oatmeal, peanut butter & sugar cookies so far. Everything is cleaned up and ready to go for oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and the pumpkin bread tomorrow.

Think I can finally say I have got a bit of holiday cheer going – things seem to be coming together and I am actually feeling like everything will get done, and I won’t even have to be up until 3 AM for the next 6 nights.

My biggest problem with the holidays is that it’s really hard for me to get into it until about the last week before Christmas. At which point, it’s kinda late to really be starting anything…

Of course, I could carry over the late-breaking enthusiasm into doing things ahead of time for next year…. HAHAHAHAHA. OK, it’s a nice thought, but probably not terribly realistic. :)

Chocolate chip cookies are done, sugar cookies are on deck. Not a single one burned!!!!

The scarf that really, really needs to be done by tomorrow night is coming along quite well.

The cats are exceptionally ticked at me as I won’t let them have any of the cookies, nor will I let them attack the knitting. I’m such a meanie.

Flank steak & noodles for dinner. Came out very well, grill works like a champ.

Learned that I need to be extra careful with the cancel button on the oven. Thought I was turning off the timer and unfortunately, turned off the oven altogether. Sadly, the rolls just could not be salvaged.

Was going to have some wine with dinner but totally forgot about it in all the juggling of food – guess that will have to be desert. :)

Clean up first, though. Bah.

Can’t argue with a horoscope like this:

Even coffee won’t boost your energy today. Try sneaking a catnap instead.

I wasn’t really planning on trying to do much of anything today as it is, so this works out well! ;)

Thanks to Amazon, I am near done with my shopping. I am very grateful to have a family that loves to read. Tomorrow should be the last of the shopping, next weekend is baking and that’s it.

Looks like Christmas Eve will just be lots of appetizers. A run to Trader Joe’s should take care of that quite nicely.

Perhaps that nap is in order.

Looking at the oven, I have realized something. If the leveling feet don’t have another 1/4 inch of height left in them, I’m really screwed. While the width of the oven itself is fine, the top is made to extend over the counter on either side. One the one hand, this is good, because you don’t have crud getting between the oven & cabinets. But, this could be bad if they can’t jack up the height just a bit more… (I swear, I really did measure everything several times…)

Kitchen is done, laundry is in the dryer. Dining room is still a disaster, but I can tend to that tomorrow. Main thing is that everything is out of the way for the oven to be installed. Will be nice to have it on the wall instead of in the middle of the room.

I’ve run out of bin liners, which means a trip to Costco is in my very near future. Kinda dreading that – maybe after work one night wouldn’t be as bad as the weekend?

You know, something just occured to me. When dumbass cat (aka Target) made his dash out to the woods the other night, he ended up back at the front door with no problems. Til now, he has never been more than 20 feet in either direction from the house. I had left the front door open (the screen is still in the storm door), and Snoopy sat there yelling while I was gone. I wonder if Target was able to find the house again cause Snoopy was hollering for him?

I’m having a hard time with Christmas. Still can’t really convince Mom that there isn’t much of anything I need or want, at least not that comes in the form of a Christmas present. Also have no ideas for anyone else, either.

Fridge & Microwave working well so far. Lots of extra buttons on the microwave I’ll probably never use, but it’s amazingly hard just to get a basic microwave with a turntable without all the rest. It has a “beverage” button. Now, tell me, who doesn’t already know exactly how many seconds you have to pop your coffee into the microwave to get it to the temp you like? (The button makes my coffee too hot. Damn!! I’ll have to actually push 6-0-Start!)

The oven is filled with taped-in manuals & boxes – I am going to leave those as is with a note for for the installer to please do the removing, as I have no idea what all is in there and I am afraid of breaking anything. There did appear to be a roasting pan in there – WOOT! (I’ll probably keep my old one anyway, but YAY, cookware!)

Kitchen & dining room still look like an explosive device was set off. I have gotten the dishwasher & a load of laundry going, so that’s something. Will hit the rest this evening sometime.

Wish I could buy a bottle of motivation.

Finally. 3:50 PM arrival.

Looked at the routing sheet – absolutely NO indication that there was a 12-3 window they were supposed to adhere to. Looked at the other ones on the clipboard. If someone had a window, it was written at the bottom with the date. Mine just had the date. So, that would explain the arrival time.

got to see my palace/hovel. Of course, just as they pulled out the old fridge. Dear lord, that was pretty disgusting. 2 cats just makes normal dustbunnies become dustbunnies on steriods. Got that vacuumed out, and knowing he is a neat freak – asked him when he thought it was good enough considering another large box was gonna go on top of it. :)

Called the oven installer – he’s gonna come take care of it on Monday. Just no way to expect him to do it today.

One kinda funny thing. I watched the two guys bring the fridge in, and then they’ve got it in front of the wall, and they’re just staring at it and whispering amongst themselves. Suddenly, a light bulb goes on in my head.
“I cut the power to those outlets when you were messing with the microwave.” (One of them was doing something right around the microwave outlet with a screwdriver. As I have no desire to have to call 911 on top of everything else, I just shut everything off for the kitchen at the circuit breaker.)
Flip the circuits again and all was well. Apparently, when they plugged it in and nothing happened, there was some panic.

I just spent the last 15 minutes pulling what seemed to be 800 yards of packing tape off the inside of the fridge.

Dear god, I just realized they didn’t put my kitchen door back on…and I’m not tall enough to do it myself. Amazing – I just called the shop again and talked to someone different – they seem to know how to get in touch with them… Cause I KNOW one of them has a damn cell phone from when they were here.

Off to try and put my kitchen back together and possibly kick the ass out of the frat boy outside that has decided to howl at the moon….

OK, so I do feel kinda guilty that I honored our vets today by going shopping, but the vets in my family would have come and smacked me upside the head for waiting and paying about 35% more…

That being said, I’ve got a new kitchen on the way – decided to go for it and get the fridge along w/the microwave & oven. Went in armed with my list of model numbers and was done in less than 15 minutes.

I do feel a smidge guilty for replacing them when they’re not 100% completely dead yet. But it sucks to wait 30+ minutes to get something into the oven, only to have it burn because the damn thing decided to go through one more preheat cycle… Pieces of the microwave were actually falling off, and carrots are not supposed to freeze in the crisper bin.

OK, I think I’m done justifying this to myself – I know once it’s all here, I’ll be very glad I did it, but wow, I loathe spending money on the house…

Finally, FINALLY got a nasty error reproduced and a bug submitted on a call I’ve been working for over a week now. Became this joint escapade w/the technical group to get it figured out, and tonight, WE DID!!! (OK, the tech side did most of the figuring out, but I helped, dammit!) We also gave folks something to talk about because *gasp* I’d been spending a lot of time with my tech counterpart on this. At each others desks. Working. Holy shit, Batman there must be more to it than that! People are dumbasses sometimes.

And to celebrate, I am going to go buy a new kitchen tomorrow. Well, not really, but the Maytag dealer is having a sale and I will likely end up with my new microwave & oven, and maybe see what they can do for me for a fridge. Here’s what I’ve picked out:
except in black, and

and quite possibly, this fridge in black:

What I love about my Maytag dealer is that they will do installations on Saturdays, and it would be a real treat to have decently working appliances… I even called Mom last night to try and figure out what I really do & don’t need in oven “features” – I can get the low end and still be WAY far ahead of what I’ve got now.

A whole boatload of geese just went flying over the house, honking away. You’d think they’d just settle down somewhere for the night… Cause that’s certainly my plan at this point.

Niters all.

My microwave is slowly dying, as is my oven. They’re both over 20 years old. My fridge is a total POS as well, and is over 10 years old. I’ve been putting off replacing them due to laziness & general stinginess.

I’ve gotten a postcard from my local Maytag dealer (I had already decided I would get my replacements from them) – and they’re having a “private sale” this Thursday.

Seeing as how it costs nothing to go and at least look and find out how good this sale is (if at all), I will be heading over there Thursday night, and may leave with a new kitchen. I’ve got all the measurements taken from the kitchen, pored over the websites, have the model #s & regular prices of the items I want. Leaves little to sales pressure, at least for the cooking side.

The fridge I will have to actually talk to someone about, as the available space is a bit odd due to the cabinetry. While I could always take a hacksaw to the cabinets like ’s old landlady did when she put her new fridge in, I am thinking I just need some assistance in finding one that actually will fit the space I have.

Why is it that in London you have a decent selection of Bardolinos in every on-off shop, but in the US, the only thing the local market carries is the mass-produced offering of one vineyard??

There is a wider selection of Shiraz than Bardolinos around here – and that’s annoyed me from the time I got back from my trip to London in 2000…and Australia is farther away than Europe.

Yes, I do hold a grudge about the strangest things, why do you ask?

The weather again today can be summed up in one word: shitty.

The long version would be: cold, grey, rainy, nasty and depressing.

This has been a fairly craptastic week. The icky weather has just put me in a tailspin.

Work has been a PITA. I’ve got fourteen calls assigned to me, and about 85% of that is me waiting on clients to send me stuff. Damn, if it’s THAT important – send me the data. Otherwise – don’t call us. Cause right now, to look at the queue, you’d think I couldn’t close a call to save my life. I did let Mgr B know as I left, “It’s really not as bad as it looks, honest.” I have gotten out of work on time (or reasonably close to it) once this week.

My day started with a client getting all huffy on me when I asked her to do something, and then as I am trying to still work the issue she puts ANOTHER call in asking for Manager B, who doesn’t even know who she is, I call back asking again for the data I requested and I get a very sheepish, “I found the problem, we didn’t do X.” (Which I had specifically asked her if they had done…) and “I’ve made a very large problem out of nothing.” No shit, sherlock, because I am sure everyone noticed you put a second call in on the same subject requesting a manager (who she never got, BTW) – so I asked if I could go ahead and close her second call… “oh, yes, of course” Well, I got an extra easy close out of the deal at least, and Manager B seemed genuinely amused at the resolution of the issue.

Then, an exceptionally maddening client emails me. (Fine person, maddening as a client – as are most of our clients) She is replying to an issue closed out about 2 weeks ago. She starts with, “I have another question, and I don’t know if I should put in a new call, but anyway…” Good lord, it’s been two weeks – it’s a DIFFERENT question, put a new call in!! I tell her I am totally jammed up and can’t help her, but I’ve opened a call for her and someone will get her. I get “Okay…………………” back. Okay? How about, “thank you”? Or, “my bad – I’ll put a new call in next time”?

I have another call where I am waiting on design to tell me what the system is really supposed to do so I can decide if it is a bug or not. An email from the call center comes out, tagged to this call, “Please call back” – which surprised me as I had told her we were waiting on another department – I call her and tell her this again, and she says, “Um, that wasn’t what I called about.” Dammit, she wanted to put in a NEW call. And I got stuck with her again. Over pennies. Yes, you read that right. Pennies. And she hasn’t sent me the data I need either. Thank you, call center. Grrrr.

It usually takes me about 45 minutes to get home in the evening. Tonight it took an hour and a half.

My shoulder is knotted up again.

I am so glad tomorrow is Friday. I will spend most of my day clearing my crap out of the queue – no data, no call, have a nice day. Assuming we don’t have another hurricane hit in the next 36 hours, Saturday morning will be spent cleaning up TR Island – it will do me good to get out and do something that has a tangible result I think.

The bright spot to the day, and thank god there is one, is that I discovered a forgotten bottle of Grey Ghost Victorian Red, which is my favorite of all their wines, and it has held up just fine with a bit of age.

To all that have managed to read this far – I realize I’ve not posted a lot of “up” stuff recently – seems the need to spill a bad day out into print is stronger than the need to spill a good day out – I’ll have a good day soon and post all about it, I promise. :-D

In an absolute FLASH of brilliance this evening, rather than dicing up the chicken by hand for the chicken salad, I cut it up into some big chunks, popped it into the little food processor and a couple quick bursts later – chopped up chicken!!!! It is a little less “pretty” than dicing by hand, but SO daggone much faster, it’s worth washing out an extra bowl.

Yes, I really DID have to share that.

Julia Child is gone. :(

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&u=/nm/20040813/ts_nm/people_child_dc_6